United States v. Ragen

• Citation: 176 F.2d 579
• Decision Date: 10 October 1949
• Docket Number: No. 9796.,9796.
• Parties: UNITED STATES ex rel. WEBER v. RAGEN, Warden.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Seventh Circuit

176 F.2d 579 (1949)

UNITED STATES ex rel. WEBER v. RAGEN, Warden.

No. 9796.

United States Court of Appeals Seventh Circuit.

July 25, 1949.

Rehearing Denied August 15, 1949.

Writ of Certiorari Dismissed October 10, 1949.

COPYRIGHT MATERIAL OMITTED

Urban A. Lavery, of Chicago, Ill., court-appointed counsel, for petitioner-appellant.

Ivan A. Elliott, Attorney General, William C. Wines, Assistant Attorney General (Raymond S. Sarnow, James C. Murray, A. Zola Groves, Assistant Attorneys General, of counsel), for appellee.

Before MAJOR, Chief Judge, and KERNER and MINTON, Circuit Judges.

Writ of Certiorari Dismissed October 10, 1949. See 70 S.Ct. 49.

MINTON, Circuit Judge.

The petitioner was indicted, tried before a jury and convicted of murder in the Circuit Court of Peoria County, Illinois. He was sentenced to death. The Supreme Court of Illinois granted a petition for writ of error and made the writ a supersedeas. On the writ of error the Supreme Court, on November 9, 1948, affirmed the judgment of conviction. The People v. Weber, 401 Ill. 584, 83 N.E.2d 297. A petition for rehearing was made and denied January 12, 1949. Certiorari was sought in the Supreme Court of the United States and denied May 2, 1949. Weber v. State of Illinois, 336 U.S. 969, 69 S.Ct. 930. The petitioner sought without success to file a petition for habeas corpus in the Peoria Circuit Court. On December 8, 1948, the petitioner filed, as a poor person, in the District Court of the United States for the Northern District of Illinois a petition for habeas corpus, and an amendment thereto was filed on December 28, 1948, seeking his release from the judgment of conviction for murder and his confinement by respondent awaiting the date of his execution. On oral motion of the Attorney General of Illinois the petition was dismissed by the District Court on December 29, 1948, and a Certificate of Probable Cause was issued by the District Court. From this judgment of dismissal the petitioner has appealed. The Governor extended the date of execution to August 1, 1949. We appointed counsel to represent the petitioner here, and counsel with great diligence and ability briefed and argued the case here. We acknowledge his services with appreciation.

The questions presented are that the confessions introduced in evidence were not voluntary but were coerced and obtained through fear and intimidation, and made while the petitioner was being held in custody and before he was presented before a proper magistrate or charges filed against him; and, secondly, that the counsel appointed by the trial court to defend him was incompetent. All of this, it is alleged, violated his right to due process of law under the Fourteenth Amendment to the Federal Constitution.

"The due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment requires that action by a state through any of its agencies must be consistent with the fundamental principles of liberty and justice which lie at the base of our civil and political institutions, which not infrequently are designated as the `law of the land.' (Citing cases.) Where this requirement has been disregarded in a criminal trial in a state court this court has not hesitated to exercise its jurisdiction to enforce the constitutional guarantee." Buchalter v. People of State of New York, 319 U.S. 427, 429, 63 S.Ct. 1129, 1130, 87 L.Ed. 1492.

The federal courts are open to protect those accused and convicted of crime from the violation of the due process guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment. Though a state court may decide that confessions obtained were lawfully obtained, such decision is not binding upon the federal courts where proper showing is made that the confessions were not obtained in accordance with the standards of due process. Chambers v. State of Florida, 309 U.S. 227, 60 S.Ct. 472, 84 L. Ed. 716; Ashcraft v. State of Tennessee, 322 U.S. 143, 64 S.Ct. 921, 88 L.Ed. 1192. In these and many other cases the Supreme Court of the United States has granted certiorari to the highest courts of the states and inquired, upon a proper showing, as to the violation of federal constitutional rights and, upon a showing of such violation, has reversed the judgment of these courts.

In the instant case certiorari from the Supreme Court of the United States to the Supreme Court of Illinois was sought and denied. The violations of all constitutional rights alleged here to have occurred were alleged on certiorari and urged to the Supreme Court of the United States. The Supreme Court was obviously not impressed with the petitioner's assertion that he had been deprived by the courts of Illinois of his constitutional rights. We have been cited no case where the Supreme Court has denied certiorari, as in this case, and later decided that the United States District Court should take jurisdiction in a collateral proceeding in habeas corpus to consider the identical questions that had been presented in the direct proceeding where certiorari was denied. The rule in such cases is stated as follows in Ex Parte Hawk, 321 U.S. 114, 118, 64 S. Ct. 448, 450, 88 L.Ed. 572. "Where the state courts have considered and adjudicated the merits of his contentions, and this Court has either reviewed or declined to review the state court's decision, a federal court will not ordinarily re-examine upon writ of habeas corpus the questions thus adjudicated."

There are no extraordinary circumstances in this case that would take it out of the rule just stated. The objections to the confessions taken in this case were before the Supreme Court of Illinois and the Supreme Court of the United States. There were five confessions obtained from the petitioner. Only the fifth one, dated December 23, 1947, was introduced by the State. As to this confession the petitioner, when he took the stand in his own behalf, "testified that, when asked, he agreed to make the statement of December 23, that he made all the answers contained in the confession, and signed it voluntarily." People v. Weber, supra, 401 Ill. 589, 83 N.E.2d 301. At the time he testified he certainly could not have been under coercion or fear. He was under the protection of the court and in open court he affirmed that he voluntarily made and signed the confession of December 23, 1947. This confession he repudiated on the stand and testified to an entirely different version of the murder and laid it on one John Crowley whom no one had ever seen or heard of in the locations where the petitioner said Crowley had been or stayed or any place else.

The confession which he repudiated, he said, was made to protect his wife from being killed by this fictitious John Crowley and in order that he might be permitted to see his wife and mother, and because he hoped he might get a life sentence. It was not charged at the trial or here that the petitioner was mistreated or subjected to violence or that any promises were made to him to induce him to make the confession of December 23. The petitioner objects here, as he did in the Supreme Court of Illinois and in his petition for certiorari to the Supreme Court of the United States, that the confession of December 23, 1947, was not admissible as evidence because his prior confessions were involuntary, and especially the first one made on December 13, 1947, after he was apprehended in Texas, and that the vice of that involuntary confession followed in the others. While this first confession was in his own handwriting, he claimed in the state courts that it was obtained from him by statements of the F. B. I. agents who had arrested him in Texas that his wife was in jail with a lot of prostitutes and that she would be released if he made the statement and he would be given only a life sentence. This was denied by the officers. The State never introduced this confession.

As we have indicated before, these questions raised here as to the confessions were raised in the Supreme Court of Illinois and passed upon adversely to the petitioner, and the same questions were likewise presented in the petition for certiorari to the Supreme Court of the United States. The petitioner has made a record on those questions in both of these courts which is directly opposed to what he contends here.

The fact, if it be a fact, that the confession made in Texas on December 13, 1947, and never used by the State, was invalid because it was made under coercion or inducement, did not vitiate the confession of December 23rd about which there were no contentions of promises or inducements. The latter confession was made under far different circumstances. The petitioner admitted that it was voluntarily made before different officers many miles away from where the first confession was taken and ten days later. The confession was not contaminated because it followed one that, for the sake of argument only, we concede was not voluntary.

The rule in such circumstances is stated thus in Lyons v. State of Oklahoma, 322 U.S. 596, 603, 64 S.Ct. 1208, 1213, 88 L.Ed. 1481: "The Fourteenth Amendment does not protect one who has admitted his guilt because of forbidden inducements against the use at trial of his subsequent confessions under all possible circumstances. The admissibility of the later confession depends upon the same test — is it voluntary. Of course the fact that the earlier statement was obtained from the prisoner by coercion is to be considered in appraising the character of the later confession. The effect of earlier abuse may be so clear as to forbid any other inference than that it dominated the mind of the accused to such an extent that the later confession is involuntary. If the relation between the earlier and later confession is not so close that one must say the facts of one control the character of the other, the inference is one for the triers of fact and their conclusion, in such an uncertain situation, that the confession should be admitted as voluntary, cannot be a denial of due process."...